Homeless man living in tiny house arrested tells his side of the story

SAN DIEGO – A group of San Diegans are outraged after building a tiny house for a homeless man only to have police arrest him for living in it.

Lisa Kogan was among those who raised money to have the tiny home built.

“What has really hit me in my heart is there’s a need out here, there’s a need for people to have shelter,” Kogan said.

Kogan saw a YouTube video about a man in Los Angeles who was building tiny homes for homeless people.

“I became inspired and I got my friends behind and donated money,” Kogan said. “We built it last month. It’s a little house, it’s moveable, it has wheels.”

Kogan wanted someone deserving. She found him.

“Red cleans up around here every day, Red’s a good guy,” said Anthony Brown, who sleeps in a tent across the street from a church on 16th Street.

Red, whose real name is Michael Clark, sleeps on the streets of downtown San Diego. He also works as a deacon at the International Love Ministries of God church, which helps the homeless downtown. On Saturday, Kogan gave Red his new tiny house.

Texas plumber wants $1 million from dealership that sold his truck to jihadists

A Texas plumber has dealt with death threats and abusive phone calls after the Ford truck he sold to a local dealership showed up in the hands of jihadists in Syria ‒ with his company sign intact. Now he is suing for at least $1 million in damages.

Mark Oberholtzer, who runs Mark-1 Plumbing in Galveston, Texas, says that Autonation Ford Gulf Freeway, a dealership in Houston, resold his 2005 Ford F-250 pick-up without removing the decal with his company’s name and phone number. After the truck ended up in the hands of a Syrian rebel group, a photo of it showed up on Twitter and was featured on the final episode of Comedy Central’s ‘Colbert Report’.

Colbert joked that Syria “is going down the toilet, but for the first time, they know who to call to unclog it.”

By the end of that day, “Mark-1’s office, Mark-1’s business phone, and Mark’s personal cell phone had received over 1,000 phone calls from around the nation,” ranging from degrading to expletive-laced death threats, according to the lawsuit filed in Harris County by Oberholtzer’s attorneys. Up to 200 calls per day continued to come in over the next three weeks, and the plumber still gets calls to this day, especially after Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) commits an atrocity somewhere, the lawsuit said.

In the complaint, Oberholtzer says the dealership stopped him from removing the decal, claiming that doing so would damage the paint. At no time did anyone at the dealership inform Oberholtzer that they would “leave the decals on the truck, which would be transferred in some fashion to international jihadists conducting warfare upon innocents in Syria,” the lawsuit stated, calling what happened an “incomprehensible and horrific eventuality.”

Noting that the plumber had sold several of his old trucks to dealerships in Texas over the years, the lawsuit goes on to add: “On none of these occasions have any of those dealers transferred to international jihadists the traded-in vehicle with Plaintiffs’ identifying marking still upon them.”

According to Carfax vehicle history reports, attached to the lawsuit as evidence, the truck was sold at an auction on November 11, 2013. It was exported from Houston and ended up in Mersin, a port in southeastern Turkey. On December 15, 2014, a photo of the truck posted on Twitter showed it being used as a weapons platform by a jihadist group in Syria – with the “Mark-1 Plumbing” sign still there.

EuroParliament Prez: Christians ‘Not Safe In Our Continent’

In a high-level meeting on religious persecution in Brussels, the President of the European Parliament (EP) said that Europe cannot afford to continue ignoring the fate of Christians, who are “clearly the most persecuted group” in the world.

In Wednesday’s meeting, EP President Martin Schulz said that the persecution of Christians is “undervalued” and does not receive enough attention, which has also meant that it “hasn’t been properly addressed.”

Schulz’s concerns were echoed by EP Vice President Antonio Tajani, who warned that Europe sometimes “falls into the temptation of thinking we can ignore this task,” referring to the protection Christians throughout the world who suffer persecution.

Speakers cited the work of Open Doors, a human rights organization that monitors the persecution of Christians, noting that 150 million Christians worldwide suffer torture, rape and arbitrary imprisonment. Christians in Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, North Korea and Nigeria are among those hardest hit.

The Open Doors report for 2015 found that “Islamic extremism is by far the most significant persecution engine” of Christians in the world today and that “40 of the 50 countries on the World Watch List are affected by this kind of persecution.”

The French animal rights group, Cause Animal Nord, has come under fire after a video emerged of the activists taking away a puppy from a crying homeless man in central Paris.

The video shows the man fighting for his dog, but eventually losing out as three members of the group, including the organization’s president, seized the puppy and ran away. The homeless man was left in tears.

The cruel act has been condemned by the media and internet users. A number took to social networks to express their disgust, while others left highly critical messages on the organization’s Facebook page.

69-year-old Douglas G. Williams of Norman, Oklahoma was sentenced to two years in prison this week for running a website that pointed out the flaws in lie detector tests. Williams is a former detective for the Oklahoma City Police Department and throughout the course of his career he administered thousands of polygraph tests for his own police department, as well as other agencies like the FBI and the Secret Service. Through his experience, Williams learned that a polygraph is not a valid way of truly figuring out whether or not someone is lying. In 1979, he invented “the sting technique,” which polygraph experts now refer to as “countermeasures.”

He wrote the first manual teaching people how to pass a polygraph test, which was initially published in 1979 and, according to him, was one of the very first e-books available on the Internet.

The U.S. Department Of Justice issued a press release this week stating that they planted federal agents to pose as customers and entrap Williams in schemes to help the agents cheat on polygraph tests.

According to admissions made in connection with his plea, Williams owned and operated Polygraph.com, an Internet-based business through which he trained people how to conceal misconduct and other disqualifying information when submitting to polygraph examinations in connection with federal employment suitability assessments, background investigations, internal agency investigations and other proceedings. In particular, Williams admitted that he trained an individual posing as a federal law enforcement officer to lie and conceal involvement in criminal activity from an internal agency investigation. Williams also admitted to training a second individual, posing as an applicant seeking federal employment, to lie and conceal crimes in a pre-employment polygraph examination. Williams also admitted to instructing the individuals to deny receiving his polygraph training.

…..

Calif. mom accused of assaulting daughter’s bully

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California woman is facing charges that she grabbed a 12-year-old boy by the throat while confronting him about bullying her daughter, authorities said Sunday.

Delia Garcia-Bratcher, 30, of Santa Rosa came to an elementary school around lunchtime Friday and asked her son, who also attends the school, to point out her daughter’s alleged tormentor, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office said in a statement.

The mother grabbed the boy by the throat in front of a number of children, the statement said.

No adult saw the confrontation, and Garcia-Bratcher apparently had not checked in with the school office before coming on campus, authorities said.

Mom accused of attacking bully may have wrong boy

By TERRY COLLINS, Associated Press

Updated 10:22 pm, Monday, May 19, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Northern California mother suspected of attacking a 12-year-old boy she said was bullying her daughter at school may have targeted the wrong child, a sheriff’s official said Monday.

Investigators have not found evidence linking the boy to the bullying allegations, Sonoma County sheriff’s Lt. Steve Brown said. He said they are looking into whether another child may have harassed the girl.

“We are unable to determine if any bullying ever occurred,” Brown said. “We don’t know if this kid bullied this girl at all. It looks like he did not. We can’t find anybody to say that he did.”

The girl’s mom, Delia Garcia-Bratcher, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of inflicting injury on a child after sheriff’s deputies say she came to Olivet Elementary Charter School in Santa Rosa on Friday and grabbed the boy by the throat. She asked her son, who also attends the school, to point out who was bullying her daughter, the sheriff’s office said.

Garcia-Bratcher’s lawyer, Ben Adams, said Monday that his client is very upset over the accusation and adamantly denies attacking the boy.

“She does not deny confronting the boy and telling him to ‘knock it off,’ but she absolutely denies touching him,” Adams said.

While Garcia-Bratcher may have broken an administrative rule by not signing in when she arrived at the school, she had every right to protect her children, he said.

“I don’t know what the DA will charge her with, and if they do, we will absolutely fight it vigorously every step of the way,” Adams said.

Garcia-Bratcher told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that she was about 3 feet away from the boy when she confronted him about calling her daughter a “dirty Indian.” She said he agreed to stop bullying her daughter and that they had no physical contact.

A Santa Rosa mom charged with marching onto an elementary school campus and grabbing the throat of a 12-year-old boy she believed was bullying her daughter said Monday she never laid a hand on the youth.

Delia Garcia-Bratcher, 30, said she was about three feet away from the boy Friday when she spoke to him about name-calling, which she said had made her 10-year-old daughter come home in tears from Olivet Charter Elementary School.

After a brief talk, she said the boy agreed not to do it again and the two parted company with no physical contact.

“He just said ‘okay,’” Garcia-Bratcher said. “He was real polite and walked away.”

But the boy apparently ran to a teacher complaining Garcia-Bratcher grabbed his throat and shoved him, a sheriff’s spokesman said. He had red marks on his neck that were later photographed by the school, the spokesman said.

Garcia-Bratcher was arrested the next day after an investigation. She’s expected to make a first court appearance Thursday on a single felony count of inflicting injury on a child.

Lt. Steve Brown said Monday it is not clear what prompted the assault.

The boy told deputies he didn’t know why the woman grabbed him, Brown said. There appeared to be no connection between the boy and Garcia-Bratcher’s daughter, such as a shared classroom or lunch area, he said.

“We can’t prove these kids had any interaction,” Brown said. “Did she get the wrong child? I don’t know.”

Brown said it was possible the boy was lying. But he said statements from witnesses coupled with photos of the red marks “leads us to believe it happened.”

But Garcia-Bratcher insisted Monday she didn’t touch the boy, who her daughter said called her a “dirty Indian.” She said another student told her the boy grabbed his own neck right after the incident, saying he was going to get Garcia-Bratcher in trouble.

Mom held in airport for hours after refusing to let TSA x-ray her breast-milk gets $75,000 in legal settlement

A Southern California woman who was held at a Phoenix airport four years ago after refusing to have her breast milk X-rayed said Wednesday she has reached a tentative settlement with the Transportation Security Administration.

Stacey Armato, who filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, said TSA officials have tentatively offered her $75,000, along with promises to retrain agents and clarify its guidelines on screening breast milk.

The reassurances about revised training and rules were more important than the monetary compensation, she said.

Refused: Stacey Armato of Hermosa Beach, California, was held at a Phoenix airport in 2010 after refusing to have her breast milk for son Lorenzo, pictured, x-rayed

‘We had been waiting for them to really kind of confirm that they would be retraining everybody and making these policy updates,” Armato said. “When we finally got confirmation of that, that was really reassuring.’

TSA spokesman Ross Feinstein declined to comment on a “pending matter.” He confirmed that current TSA regulations classify breast milk as liquid medication. As a result, parents are permitted to bring an amount larger than the 3 ounces normally allotted for liquids.

According to the agency’s website, officers now use a bottled liquid scanner system in most airports to screen medically necessary liquids for explosives or other threats. The system uses lasers, infrared or electromagnetic resonance, rather than X-rays.

That was not an option at the time for Armato, who said she was accustomed to having a visual inspection for breast milk when traveling.

Armato, of Hermosa Beach, said she asked for an alternate screening of her breast milk at a security checkpoint at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Feb. 1, 2010. She cited concerns about exposing the milk to radiation.

According to a 2013 complaint from Armato, agents denied her request and then detained her in a glass enclosure for 40 minutes.

Reports: Company Tied to Reid’s Son Wants Land in Bundy Standoff

Rory Reid

Sunday, 13 Apr 2014 08:48 PM

The Nevada rancher who forced the federal Bureau of Land Management to back down last week may have been targeted because a Chinese solar company with ties to Sen. Harry Reid’s son wants the land for an energy plant, several websites report.

A report on Godfatherpolitics.com, says Chinese energy giant ENN Energy Group wants to use federal land as part of its effort to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel-building plant in the southern Nevada desert. Rory Reid, the son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is representing ENN in their efforts to locate in Nevada.

Part of the land ENN wants to use was purchased from Clark County at well below appraised value. Rory Reid is the former Clark County Commission chairman, and he persuaded the commission to sell 9,000 acres of county land to ENN on the promise it would provide jobs for the area, Reuters reported in 2012.

In addition to the county acreage, the federal Bureau of Land Management at one time was looking at BLM property under dispute with cattle rancher Cliven Bundy. The BLM is headed by former Harry Reid senior policy adviser Neil Kornz.

According to BizPac Review, BLM documents indicate that the federal property for which Bundy claims grazing rights were under consideration by a solar energy company. Those documents have since been removed from BLM’s website, but BizPac quotes from one of them:

“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle.”

Federal Land Grab In Nevada To Benefit Chinese Solar Farm

Documents reveal Senator Harry Reid and his son, Rory, are involved in an effort by a Chinese energy company to build a $5billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert. The same swath of land once belonging to the ousted cattle ranchers. Moreover, Harry Reid’s son used to chair the county commission in Clark county and senator Reid’s former senior advisor is now the Director of the Bureau of Land Management.http://www.infowars.com/breaking-sen-…

How people respond to criticism can reveal a lot about their character. Some might try to debate or reason with those they disagree with. Others prefer to ignore critics. City officials in Honolulu take a different approach: They use a bulldozer.

Choon James is a successful real estate broker with over two decades of experience in Hawaii. But the city of Honolulu is seeking to seize property she’s owned for almost a decade to build what she calls a “super-sized” fire station in rural Hauula.

Since January 2010, she has put up signs to protest Honolulu’s use of eminent domain. These signs declare “Eminent Domain Abuse: Who’s Next?” and “YouTube Eminent Domain Abuse—Hawaii.” For more than three years these signs have been up without any incident.

But now the city is showing a callous disregard for Choon’s freedom of speech. Back in May, Honolulu seized two of her eminent domain protest signs. Without her consent, city employees went onto the property and seized and impounded her signs before damaging them. Even worse, the city slapped her with a notice for trespassing, for property she is trying to defend in court.

After these signs were torn down, Choon placed three more signs there. These lasted just a few months before the city once again seized the signs. This time, Honolulu was much more dramatic. On October 18, city workers, backed by police officers, squad cars and a bulldozer, came by and literally bulldozed those protest signs.

The city’s actions show a shameful lack of respect for the First and Fourth Amendments. Citizens have a right to protest government actions. The First Amendment was enacted precisely to protect citizens who criticize the government from retaliation. Lawsuits challenging Honolulu’s unreasonable seizures and chilling attacks on free speech are now pending in federal court.

One Lawmaker Is Literally Smashing The Belongings Of The Homeless With A Sledgehammer

By Michael Snyder, on November 20th, 2013

There is a war on compassion in America today. You are about to read about a Hawaii lawmaker that has used a sledgehammer to smash up at least 30 shopping carts that homeless people were using. Yes, you read that correctly. He is actually carrying a sledgehammer around so that he can destroy the belongings of homeless people. He claims that it is his intention “to do something practical that will really clean up the streets”. But as crazy as that sounds, the truth is that he is not alone. As you will read about below, there are dozens of major cities all over the country where feeding the homeless has been banned. In many of these instances, public officials are very open about the fact that the goal is to make their cities “cleaner” and “safer” places to live. They simply do not want the homeless around. In fact, there are some cities such as San Diego and San Francisco where social workers are actually giving homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town. If you doubt this, just keep reading. The United States is becoming a very cold, heartless place, and homeless people are increasingly being treated like human garbage in this country. So how bad will the treatment of the homeless become when the economy gets really bad?

When I first heard about a state representative out in Hawaii that was using a sledgehammer to go after homeless people, I could hardly believe it. But it is actually true. The following is a short excerpt from an RT article that was published earlier this week…

In the past two weeks residents in Hawaii noticed what appeared to be a crazed individual carrying a sledgehammer through the streets of Honolulu, a state lawmaker looking to rid the city of homeless people by targeting their belongings.

State Representative Tom Brower (D) is currently dedicated to dealing out his own personal brand of “justice” by seeking out homeless people and destroying their possessions. Brower estimates that he has used the sledgehammer to smash at least 30 shopping carts, rendering them useless by bashing in the front wheels.

“I got tired of telling people I’m trying to pass laws. I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he told Hawaii News Now. “I find abandoned junk, specifically shopping carts, and I remove them.”

How cold and heartless can one person possibly be?

The truth is that almost all of us are just a few bad breaks from being out on the street.

Hasn’t he ever needed a helping hand at some point in his life?

Unfortunately, government control freaks are cracking down on those that are trying to provide that “helping hand” all over the nation. For example, one Christian ministry in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has recently been threatened with jail time for feeding the homeless…

Every week for more than five years, staff and volunteers associated with Isaiah 61 Ministries have provided meals, toiletries, clothing and other forms of assistance to the homeless men and women of Harrisburg, as well as to the poor and elderly. Because of the recent threats made by the Dauphin County commission, Isaiah 61 Ministries and several other ministries engaged in similar religious exercises throughout the rest of the week have been unable to serve those most in need of help at this time of year.

And in a previous article I wrote about an organization called Love Wins Ministries that made national headlines when police in Raleigh, North Carolina threatened to arrest them if they continued to distribute sausage biscuits and coffee to homeless people living in the heart of the city. The following is from a first-hand account from someone who actually witnessed the police threats…

On the morning of Saturday, August, 24, Love Wins showed up at Moore Square at 9:00 a.m., just like we have done virtually every Saturday and Sunday for the last six years. We provide, without cost or obligation, hot coffee and a breakfast sandwich to anyone who wants one. We keep this promise to our community in cooperation with five different, large suburban churches that help us with manpower and funding.

On that morning three officers from Raleigh Police Department prevented us from doing our work, for the first time ever. An officer said, quite bluntly, that if we attempted to distribute food, we would be arrested.

Our partnering church brought 100 sausage biscuits and large amounts of coffee. We asked the officers for permission to disperse the biscuits to the over 70 people who had lined up, waiting to eat. They said no. I had to face those who were waiting and tell them that I could not feed them, or I would be arrested.

Sadly, these are not isolated incidents. This kind of thing is happening all over the nation.

In the past two weeks residents in Hawaii noticed what appeared to be a crazed individual carrying a sledgehammer through the streets of Honolulu, a state lawmaker looking to rid the city of homeless people by targeting their belongings.

State Representative Tom Brower (D) is currently dedicated to dealing out his own personal brand of “justice” by seeking out homeless people and destroying their possessions. Brower estimates that he has used the sledgehammer to smash at least 30 shopping carts, rendering them useless by bashing in the front wheels.

“I got tired of telling people I’m trying to pass laws. I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he told Hawaii News Now. “I find abandoned junk, specifically shopping carts, and I remove them.”

Brower admitted he was “disgusted” with homeless people during an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, adding that he has not taken a homeless person’s cart directly from them but that is a possibility in the future.

“If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets,” he said. “I don’t want to be threatening anybody. I think it’s threatening to steal things and then walk around with them like it’s their own.”

Brower did say that he is unafraid to wake people up, though.

“If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving,’” he said.

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